motherhood simplified

Tag: kids

The Christmas festivities have continued, but I was getting sick of posting every day [as I’m sure you all were as well].

Dec 8: Baking Christmas Cookies

On the 8th day of Christmas, the kids and I spent most of the day baking Christmas cookies for [spoiler alert] Brett’s work party that we were hosting the following day.

No Bakes:

The Grinch Crinkle Cookies:

Red Velvet Cheesecake Cookies:

Oreo Christmas Trees:

I had planned to do the standard cut out sugar cookies as well, but my feet hurt and I was tired after four hours, so we called it quits. [Hard to believe that two months ago I ran for four hours straight and now I can’t even stand in my kitchen for four hours…ahh, pregnant life.]

Dec 9: Christmas Party

On the 9th day of Christmas, we hosted Brett’s management team for a Christmas party. We spent most of the day cleaning [since I haven’t been doing much housework these days 😬] and prepping for dinner, but the kids were allowed to stay up extra late to meet the guests and join in part of the party.

Dec 10: Arthur Christmas Movie Night

On the 10th day of Christmas, the kids and I watched Arthur Christmas for our “Monday movie night.” We had popcorn and movie candy – which are rare treats in our home.

Dec 11: Anniversary / Christmas Crafts with Auntie Paula

On the 11th day of Christmas, Brett and I celebrated our 8th wedding anniversary by going to dinner and a movie. Our wonderful Auntie Paula came over to watch the kids and she brought Christmas crafts for them to do.

It’s been fun!

We are already prepping for tonight’s annual celebration! [More on that at a later date.]

[I’m usually not a fan of doing anything purely for the sake of tradition – but I suppose the Christmas season is an exception.]

So we bundled up the kids….

[And I mean bundled. Jo could barely move under all the layers.]

…and we headed to downtown Geneva to do the Christmas Walk thing – which is really just an excuse for most people to shop at the local shops and eat at the local restaurants. We don’t do any shopping though. We wade through the sea of people to countdown to the lighting of the big tree in front of city hall and we stand in unbelievably long lines for half an ounce of melted chocolate and a piece of freshly pulled candy cane.

For those three small things, it took one hour and forty five minutes.

😱

We must be insane. This is what Christmas does to us.

But it was cool to watch them make candy canes in the Graham’s shop window and to eat them just after they were made – still warm!

And there were carolers on the street corners, and a living nativity, and Christmas lights on the trees, and Christmas music being blasted in the streets… all good Christmas cheer type of stuff that I love.

Last year, we waited forever to take the kids to see Santa, but after a potty emergency and all of us losing feeling in our faces and all of our digits, we decided to skip Santa this year and hightail it outta there! [We literally ran most of the way back to the car.]

I think next year we’re going to skip it unless it’s above 20°…maybe 30°.

Well, only the older two skated, but JoElle and I had fun watching and hanging out in the warming shelter. 👍🏻

This is another one of our annual traditions and gets more enjoyable each year as the kids get older. However, it was really cold tonight and the kids can barely stand on their skates, let alone actually skate. So we only lasted about thirty minutes. But we still made fun memories.

That’s what it’s all about, right?

Afterwards, we always go to Noodles and Co to get warm cheesy noodles. [It’s the only way to bribe Brett into skating the kids around the whole time – way to take one for the team, babe!]

On a typical morning in our home, the kids have two options for breakfast: oatmeal or eggs. And the kids and I always choose oatmeal.

[What? It’s a super healthy breakfast!]

So you can imagine their excitement when we have Christmas tree waffles!

They were so excited that they fell asleep talking about it last night and woke up a full hour earlier than usual, begging for me to get up and make breakfast.

These waffles are a refined sugar rush complete with m&m’s, powdered sugar, AND syrup.

I have been known to make pancakes every once in a while and even bake cinnamon sugar donuts for breakfast on rare occasions [usually when we are out of oats], but Christmas tree waffles only come around once a year.

😋 😋 😋

Today we also cut out paper snowflakes to hang on our windows.

They did really well considering Theo has never used scissors before in his life and I didn’t give either one of them a pattern of any kind. I just handed them the folded paper and let them go nuts.

I’m going to spray them with a glitter spray I have laying around and then hang them on the sliding door. [Now that we’ve finally taken down the gratitude tree, the door is looking very bare.] The snowflakes are perfect timing since the snow outside has all melted. ☹️

And the kids are already talking about our exciting plans for tomorrow. Let’s hope the weather is nice!🤞🏻

Yesterday, while we were visiting Brett’s mall, we swung by a toy store to let the kids pick out toys to donate to the Salvation Army’s Toys for Kids campaign. And today, for our Christmas activity, we dropped them off at the collection bin outside Eva’s preschool.

[This is Theo, regretting his decision to give the toys away 😂.]

We do this every year with the kids…and it’s not easy for them to go into a toy store and leave without a toy for themselves. I just kept telling my kids, “You will get your gifts at Christmas and these toys are for other kids to open at Christmas, so you can all have something special Christmas morning.”

It might seem cruel, but it is so important to me that my kids don’t think of Christmas as just a day when they get gifts. I am constantly telling them that Christmas is just as much about spending time with family and friends and giving gifts to other people.

We have also been working very hard on patience with Evangeline, so she understands now that she has to be patient and wait for Christmas to get her gifts. And she and Theo both have such sweet spirits and they want to give toys to other children, so it went pretty well this year. I hope that in the future, my kids can embrace the spirit of giving and look forward to the time when they get to make some other child’s Christmas magical.

Today the kids and I went to Brett’s store to decorate his office and the back room for the holidays. It wasn’t exactly easy to make the place look festive, with big racks of clothes and employee lockers as a backdrop, but we did our best.

The kids put ornaments on two small trees and we strung a few strands of lights and hung a big wreath.

The real excitement was just visiting daddy at work. The kids were so excited, they woke up talking about it and cried when we had to leave. [And we actually visit his work pretty frequently.]

This was the first time JoElle has been to his store since she started walking. She LOVED exploring and just tottered back and forth down the hallway the whole time.